Love In The Time Of War
Book Review By Bilal Shaheen
05 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org
BOOK: THE BOOK OF GOLD LEAVES
AUTHOR: WAHEED MIRZA
PUBLISHER: PENGUIN/VIKING
"When you come back to me. I will tell you everything.
You know what I miss the most. The waiting".
These sublime words describe the utter loneliness of Roohi, the lead
character of Waheed Mirza's new novel The Book Of Gold Leaves. Roohi's
exuberant romance and her forwarded journey into the landscape of loss
is a heartbreaking love story which explains how social lives have
been terrified by the agressive conflict.
The Kashmir of 1990's was a tumultous period of discontent,
disturbance and anarchy. It resembles, even artifects, the imaginary
Hobessian State-Of-Nature- a seventeenth century England of "war of
all against all". It was a choatic interlude which brutalised the
centuries-old social fabric and put in place a corroded political
order of permanent disturbance. When the brutality of conflict
sorrounded every sphere of life and most of the Kashmiri's are left
with no choice but to die as "ferrocious militants". An age of
unwanted enemity, collosal loss and above all, an agressive conflict
which no one wants to fight.
The BOOK OF GOLD LEAVES , through its discursive narrative, bring
alive the horrors of the period which still haunt us like a
hydra-headed monster. As unforgetable as The Collaborator, this novel
places us in Kashmir with an open heart. The Book Of Gold Leaves has
all the particularity of a novel and all the force of a feeble. It
reads, in many ways, like an old-fashioned romantic adventure. Waheed
has that rare thing, a Dickensian knack for storytelling. What keeps
this novel vivid and compelling is Waheed's eye for the textures of
daily life and his ability to potray a full range of human emotions.
The novel begins in Mir family in downtown Srinagar with a fervent
relationship between Faiz and Roohi. Faiz, a pepper-machie artist
whose life is a gripping tale of a heartfelt saga that encompass
romance and melodrama, personal and political intrigue and the
onslaught of war and disposession. Roohi was a dreamer of dreams, who
extending her university degrees to find her true love. They both met
at the Khanqa- he-molla shrine and decided to star in a love story.
Theirs is a love written in the stars, but it is the land, a
hauntingly beautiful but disturbed land, that dictates what will
become of them.
The landscape of Kashmir in Waheed Mirza's second novel is swiftly
changing around two young lovers. Army barracks are opening up at
local girls school and frightening stories of torture and voilence are
becoming more and more common. Soldeirs are appearing in every street
and then there is a zal, a monster vehicle with a "jaw like grip" that
scoops up innocents off the streets and vanishes with them. The city
turned into a military garrison with unjust cruelties. The novel has
other equally important characters- Shanta Kaul, principle at Girl's
High School and Sumit Kumar, a military officer- known for his
anti-insurgency militarism. As the love between Faiz and Roohi is all
set to become a heroic melodrama, Kashmir has been engulfed by the
irridentist forces of occupation. A love story so harshly torn apart
by the brutal war. The tragic event which shattered Faiz's conscience
was the killing of his godmother by the occupants. Faiz crossed over
to Pakistan and took up arms to avenge the killing of his godmother.
In the camp it was Roohi that occupy his mind. In his return to the
war-torn valley, Faiz finds himself again in the midst of the war.
Roohi's father was murdered by the Indian foces, an event which
shattered her consciousness between life and death, love and loss and
choice and duty. The novel, through its compelling narrative logic,
made us think of the suffering, death and humiliation in the turbulant
war-zones. Kashmir is undergoing similar humiliations. Conflict has so
immensely and so ruthlessly plagued our conscience that even the
mildest of human relations are being sparred by it.
The book is a distressing study of a city and culture under seige from
more than one occupying force. In Srinagar, the old peaceable ways of
life, and in particular of religious coexistence, began to unravel.
The novel follows the fortunes of three local families, Shia, Sunni,
Hindu. The beauty of the novel immensely lies in its presentation of
Kashmir's rich cultural mosaic- the serene beauty of Srinagar, our
religious epitome Khanqa he mollah and the mesmerizing sounds of river
Jehlum. Waheed Mirza gave us a vivid and engaging story that reminds
us how long his people have been struggling to truimph over the forces
of voilence- forces that continue to threaten them even today.
Stunning and heartbreaking in its quite intensity, The Book Of Gold
Leaves has unfolded an intruiging personal trauma so ruthlessly
intervowen by the agressiveness of the conflict. The author has done a
commendable job in unravelling an important political trajectory- the
conflicting of social relations by the intoxicated occupation. The
novel, through a painfully honest story, is a moving potrait of Modern
Kashmir, from its pre-insurgency glory days through the terrible reign
of Indian occupation.
Waheed Mirza's language is simple and sarcastic. He writes with great
wit and sympathy. Away from territorial rivalry and power relations,
Waheed's novels are extraordinary and outragously sensual, which have
their subject the actual human conditions of the war-torn people. Part
of the brilliance lies in his delicately drawn characters and their
resemblence to the actual plight of Kahmiri's. Faiz, who is destined
to paint a masterpeice, Falaknuma, was forced to bury his dream and
become a victim of a bloody battle that no one wants to fight. Roohi,
who dreamed to write a romantic tale in the calm and compenduim of
Srinagar, saw that calm winding up in the flames of the conflict and
witnessing the loss of humanity at the peril of a brutal war.
Unlike The Collaborator, where narrator is an " imperial construct"
and works as an imperial bogeyman, The Book Of Gold Leaves is truly
and invaraibly our own story. Faiz and Roohi, wholly and partially,
are our own people, the wretched of the earth, who speak and act for
us. The Book Of Gold Leaves is a tour de force of urgent political
observation, timid through the exuberant agony of young lovers, about
a subject unimaginably macabre and surreal. Impossible to resist, The
Book Of Gold Leaves is a devastating and painfully honest story of
love, loss and betrayal.
The reviewer is a political commentator, based in Kashmir.
.
Comments are moderated